TrapWire: spying On YOU?

August 16, 2012

“Emails obtained via a hack of intelligence agency Stratfor have shed light on a secret, comprehensive U.S. surveillance effort led by Virginia-based TrapWire. The details were released by whistleblower site Wikileaks, but an ongoing distributed denial of service (DDoS) attack against Wikileaks.org has made it difficult to access the TrapWire docs…”. The Young Turks host Cenk Uygur breaks it down.

I guess this does not concern me that much….. Seems to be along the same discussion lines as other profiling and pattern recognition and I can appreciate the good and bad points. I think some could argue that basic monitoring of dangerous areas or suspected high value targets (Nuclear plants, oil refineries, military bases, airports, govt buildings, etc) would be smart and VERY necessary. Like anything this tracking could go too far. However, if there is a group of guys seeming to collect intelligence around a nuclear plant, i want video cameras to record the cars they drive in, track the licence plates and their faces then cross check if they are on any watch lists for know terrorist activities, etc. Then if you do get a hit, I want judges to quickly get search warrants and respectfully go through their hotel rooms, cars, homes, business to make sure no evil plan is at work. I guess this report was supposed to scare us that Big Brother was going to get each and every one of us by mistake somehow as we buy a few extra bags of fertilizer for our ever growing garden…. when we suddenly rent a U-haul we get a CIA knock on the door. I guess that I trust that once they knock on my door they realize a real garden and real moving need is there. Yeah I hate the inconvenience of TSA just as much as you and also believe their presence is 95% a placebo effect, but as you also know there are real affects from placebos also. Maybe once you get on the official CIA watch list it must be like being a sex offender that you never get off the list and must feel like you have to prove your innocent vs. the opposite as the law intends.

…anyhow this leads me to my next point… and had me thinking that in some ways I wish they would use this technology or human tracking method more. Did you know for example that anyone in the USA can track registered sex offenders living next to you! Most have heard of this, but never tracked them. I am willing to bet you that you….Yes, YOU have over 30 sex offenders living within just a five mile radius of your house at this moment. Its not if any are close to your kids…its how many are close to you and your kids every single day and yet you have no clue. Of course they are some of the highest repeat offenders we know of… take a few seconds and check the sex offender list in your state. Here is the one for Florida. Yes, most of the sex offences are likely to be from a family member or someone close and trusted, but you may still be shocked when you run the search of your address.

Google your state…all searches are free, so if you end up on a website that wants your email or info skip the pay to monitor them sites. Maybe you live in a city vs. rural area and have 100 within a 5 mile radius of your home? Check your business and other addresses and you may just find a surprise.

What if they could track sexual predators… the 100 or so sexual preditors that are living near your House… at least the really violent ones …with history of child abuse, rape, etc.. Yes the same ones that have no ankle bracelets to monitor their movements the ones known statistically to repeat offend. The ones off parole that no one is watching. We know even when we send parole officers to monitor they can make mistakes (worst case scenario we recently found out about was: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kidnapping_of_Jaycee_Lee_Dugard ).

Did you know that when a sex offender registers their new address..that unless they are on parole that no one monitors who they move it with. So the man can move in with an unsuspecting single mother with the same age female children that he previously wen to jail for molesting?? YES! that is how broken our current system is… Unless the single mother is smart enough to do a background check on her own and the person uses their same name. So to confirm, the State of FL and also your state makes no effort to contact the mother at the registered location to warn her and her children, even though they know the history of the offender. Just saying this system is broken.

I know of exactly this case happening in FL in the last month. The ONLY reason the mother found out was he was nailed on an internet sting operation (similar to the TV show stuff http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/To_Catch_a_Predator) just last month. Yes, his address registered was done correctly (correct name, etc), however the mother apparently had no idea. And of course the 12 year old girl he was caught trying to meet was the same age as the girl living under his new roof. I don’t know that he did anything (yet) there, but it is no coincidence he is now going back to jail for the same crime he spent 7 years in prison for already. I understand he was released after spending 7 years in prision, he got out in 2006 and was on parole for 2 years, so in 2008 he no longer reported to anyone… all he had to do was register a change in address. He did that and moved in with a single mother with multiple young children matching the same age of those he violated previously. Then he was caught in a random sting trying to meet with a 12 year old ..so they nailed him and he will be going back for a long time… but how lucky was it they caught him??? Was this so lucky they caught him on his first attempt to re-offend? Love to see any posts of how many registered offenders live within a 5 mile radius of your home? Would you feel better if video software could track these monsters? I would prefer a condition of parole is ankle monitoring for life (for crime known for repeat offenders, especially violent crimes and sex based criminals) and use this video tracking as a back up.

I attentively watched this entire video waiting for him to say something that I would find disturbing… Nothing. I don’t see how any of this is a bad thing. As long as you are not a terrorist there is nothing to be concerned about here. A possibility of a few people being mis identified as threats while bugs are worked out I suppose, but nothing that could conceivably result in any threats to personal liberty (compared to something like the TSA).